We woke late to a thundery grey and raining Venice. By the time we'd packed up and got our gear to the courtyard rain had stopped so we headed to Florian for a final breakfast. Delicious and the perfect way to farewell Venice - we were there to 12pm so I even got to have a final Venician bier.
The vaporetto ride was bumpy enough to be exciting on it's own, add in the Disney anticipation and we were all jumping out of our skin. In no time we were clutching our Navigators and busting to get on board. The Magic is smaller but with just as much Disney wonder, Gab couldn't wipe the smile off her face all afternoon. 
The deck party was a blast with Max and Emerson happy to dance in the crowd until Gangnam came on, like a calling the "wop, wop" had Max up on stage at the front of the party in a flash. Post party we had dinner at Lumiere's then went to see the show - fantastic to see their faces as the characters first arrive on stage, though I think Gab was the most awestruck out of everyone :)
After the show the kids got to try on their new found freedom, Emerson was hanging out in the Oceaneer's club, while Max embroiled himself in the tweens club. Max broke curfew on his first night coming home at 11:30. He gave us some spiel about being lost, and immediately took intense and unwavering interest in how Emerson's evening had gone, anything to avoid the topic moving on to how late he was :)
The next morning Emerson and I did a Princess rush to see Elsa & Anna, then Cinderella, Belle, Tiana and Peter Pan, he's a princess right? Lazy pool day followed before formal night meant we all got dressed up and got our photo with the Mickey statue in the foyer. Max didn't even make it through his main course before he bolted for the tween club for the evening.
This morning was our second morning at sea with a massage booked for me and Max busting to get back to the club the two of us had a hurried breakfast while the girls slept in. Gab eventually had to wake Emerson up at 11am! That wasn't our only taste of impending teenage life. Gab had to call Max a dozen times before he would answer, and only then to say "Can't talk now mum, I'm in a battle" and hung up straight away. After lunch I tried to take an afternoon siesta, only to have Max bundle through the door with his new mate Martin from Amsterdam - "This is my parents place, Dad what are you doing here? C'mon lets bail Martin" At dinner he took off for 10 minutes while he took an important call, pacing up and down in the back corner of the restaurant!
The kids went off to their clubs and I got my swimmers on to have a go at the Aqua Dunk, the drop shute water slide. I've never been on one of these things before with the floor dropping away, you drop a few feet and then go flinging around off the side of the boat out over the ocean and into the landing area. Its all about the anticipation, the girl operating it knew this too well. First she plays a count down, then she hits the button to drop you. The kids before me got the count down 3-4 times while she faked that the release mechanism wasn't working, before finally doing the countdown and drop successfully. For me she videod me getting the countdown, then waited for me to react to the faked countdown, and just as I gave her a knowing laugh she dropped me, perfectly surprised :)
By lunch today we were rounding the bottom of Greece (I guess) early on during lunch you could hear a thunderous rupture heading across the ship as two fighter jets crossed first at the stern and 5 or so minutes later returned across the bow, heading from Greece to somewhere. I've only ever seen something like this in a civilian context air shows etc. But just a few kilometers away in Gaza there was an air raid that killed some boys on the beach. The two events are certainly unrelated, but it was a sharp reminder of how lucky we are to raise kids in an environment where fighter jet sounds are entertainment rather than omnipotent threat.